Small businesses don’t want to be ‘the Uber’ of their industry

These days, it may seem like every new company is pitching itself as the “Uber for X,” but it turns out not many companies actually want to be referred to as the Uber of their industry.

In a survey of 500 small businesses by online accounting software company Xero surveyed, only 1.6 percent of respondents said they aspired to be like Uber.

Graphic: Kristen V. Brown Source: Zogby Analytics

Those results may seem somewhat surprising: the quickly growing ride hailing app is valued at over $40 billion and just raised an additional $2.8 billion in investment. But the company’s popularity among small business owners may have been dinged for its battered public image. Over the past six months the company has been criticized for operating in markets where it was previously banned, a sexist ad campaign in France and airing plans to publicly smear a journalist critical of the company.

“It works very well and is tremendously popular,” said Sam Smith, a public relations crisis consultant. “It’s biggest glitches are public policy and public relations controversies — unfortunately sometimes of the company’s own making.”

In fact, tech companies in general proved to be unpopular role models for business owners: nearly 20 percent of respondents said they wanted their company to be more like ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s, rather than tech giants such as Apple, Microsoft or Google. Airbnb, which has had its own share of public relations disasters, was the least popular.

The survey also revealed that 55 percent of millennials are running at least a quarter of their business from the cloud and 80 percent are using Facebook for their business.

The survey was conducted by Zogby Analytics, polled small businesses across the country to uncover attitudes and opinions around business priorities, overall challenges and the use of technology to support the business between. The survey took place online between Dec. 10 and Dec. 14, 2014.